Chapter 313: The Yellow River bursts, and the red land is thousands of miles away
Shen Xuan and Zhao Xin mentioned the matter of Shen Zhongcai when they were having dinner that night. After hearing this, Zhao Xin couldn't help laughing twice and then covered his cheeks. His back molars were still swollen, so he stopped laughing for the time being.
"Okay, don't worry about this. I'll see him tomorrow."
After dinner, when the two were drinking tea and chatting, Shen Xuan asked the same question at noon.
"Miss Wang, what are your plans?"
Zhao Xin knew that he couldn't escape. He was silent for a while and then said: "I don't know either. In fact, she...she is sick and may not live long."
"Ah? What disease?" Shen Xuan was stunned and thought to herself that you even knew that she was sick! How many things do I don't know about you two? Thinking of this, she couldn't help but look down and twisted her face in anger. Hum.
As soon as Zhao Xin saw Shen Xuan's expression, he knew that the other party had misunderstood, so he started to make it up.
"Do you know why Miss Wang has been traveling around with her father?"
Shen Xuan didn't say anything, thinking, "I don't know."
"The father and his daughter have been seeking medical advice everywhere. That Wang Zhenyi has been ill since he was a child. His father said that he might not be able to live past the age of thirty."
Shen Xuan was silent for a while, and finally said: "So that's it, I'm too worried."
While the other party was not paying attention, Zhao Xin wiped the sweat from his forehead...
Shen Xuan's third cousin is called Shen Zhongcai. He studied for several years and didn't even pass the boy's entrance exam. Later he went to work as a clerk in Shen Jingdan's shop. After a few years, he was promoted to the accountant. He was very good at abacus. If it weren't for Shen Zhongcai was too close to Shen Jingdan, and Shen Jingdan would not ask him to come to Beihai Town.
But Shen Zhong didn't know that the Shen family was attached to Zhao Xin, so he thought that the time for him to become prosperous was coming. He originally thought that Zhao Xin would reuse the children of the Shen family, but who knew that after coming to Beihai Town for a few months, Zhao Xin only let them go to the town. As a clerk in a company, you don't have much power.
In fact, Zhao Xin did not do anything wrong, because if outsiders want to adapt to the system of Beihai Town, they must start as a clerk or become a soldier. Zhao Xin made it very clear to Shen Jingdan that I will not suppress the children of the Shen family if they are capable. Well, if you can't do it, don't expect chickens and dogs to ascend to heaven. He is not used to this problem.
Having said that, from the perspective of the ancients, you don't need to reuse your own relatives, why don't you reuse outsiders? Shen Xuan is no exception, so even though she doesn't like to make peace with others, she still mentioned it to Zhao Xin.
The next morning, Zhao Xin met Shen Zhongcai in his office. The parents of the Shen family were not ugly, and Shen Zhongcai also looked polite.
Zhao Xin didn't have much time to beat around the bush, so he got right to the point: "Do you want to seek an official position? OK, I'll ask you two questions. If you can answer them correctly, I'll let you be the mayor."
Shen Zhongcai thought that he could be the mayor of Fuldan City. He was so happy that he cupped his hands and saluted, "Your Excellency, please give me a question."
"Suppose you are stranded on a desert island, and it will take four days for the rescue ship to arrive. But you have a special disease, and you need to take one pill each of A and B every day to survive. Fortunately, you I happen to have four doses of two medicines A and B on hand, but they are all mixed together. The size, taste, color, and appearance of the two medicines are all the same, making it difficult to distinguish them with the naked eye. What should you do?"
After Zhao Xin finished speaking, he pointed to the clock on the table and added to Shen Zhongcai: "The time limit is one minute. If you can't say anything, you won't have an answer."
"I, I..." Shen Zhongcai thought to himself that this is all nonsense. Shouldn't I be tested on my abacus and four-column inventory? He looked at the clock on Zhao Xin's desk and was confused.
After half a day, seeing that there were still ten seconds left, I thought: "I will grind the pills, mix them together, and divide them into four equal parts. If everything goes well on the first day..."
Zhao Xin raised his hand and said: "Stop. I'll talk about the next one."
Shen Zhongcai wiped the sweat from his forehead with his sleeve and thought to himself, did I get the answer right?
"In the first ten days of this month, I went to the big market in the south of the city. First I got a haircut for 20 cents, then I listened to a commentary for 1 yuan. I also bought half a catty of pine nuts in the market, and then I went to a cloth shop to get it.
I bought two feet of cloth and finally went to the savings bank to deposit 50 silver coins."
As Shen Zhongcai listened, he kept fiddling with his fingers hidden under the table. He was trying to write down the numbers that Zhao Xin said. Shen Zhongcai thought to himself that this answer should be an accounting question, and he would definitely be able to answer it.
Zhao Xin smiled slightly and continued: "The barber shop is closed every six days on the first and eighth day of every month; the savings bank is closed for two days every fifth day starting from the first day of the month; the market is only open on the first, third and sixth day of every ten days.
, open on the eighth and tenth day of the lunar month, and the cloth shop is closed on Saturday. May I ask which big market I went to on the first day of the lunar month? It also has a one-minute time limit."
"Spicy piece, your mother!" Shen Zhongcai's vision went dark, his fingers hidden under the table suddenly cramped up into the shape of chicken claws, and Yangzhou dialect almost came out...
"Hahahahaha~~"
Shen Xuan came over at noon. After hearing about the interview in the morning, she was lying on the bed laughing so hard that her stomach hurt. She rubbed her stomach and stood up and said to Zhao Xin: "You are such a bad person, how could you come up with this?"
Are you teasing him with such a weird question?"
Zhao Xin sat on the chair and said with a smile: "I'm not teasing him, this is logical reasoning, and the test is the ability to analyze emergencies. What you want to rely on in Beihai Town is not the eight-legged essay, nor the cheating. The first thing is your character.
Reliable, and secondly able to deal with problems independently. He wants to be an official, but he doesn’t even have basic analytical skills, how dare I let him manage a region?"
Shen Xuan stopped laughing, recalled Zhao Xin's second question, and asked curiously: "How should I answer this second question?"
Zhao Xindao: "Think about it, the opening hours of barber shops, savings banks, markets, and cloth shops overlap on which day?"
Shen Xuan said coquettishly: "I don't want to, just tell me."
Looking at Shen Xuan's appearance, Zhao Xin's heart bubbled with beauty, so he scraped the other person's nose and said, "On the third day of the lunar month and the tenth day of the lunar month."
Shen Xuan thought for a while, then smiled and said: "It turns out that the amount of money you mentioned before was all because of the maze."
Zhao Xin shook his head and said: "If your cousin can be right for a day, I will consider him a pass, but his brain has turned into mush. He still wants to be an official? What a dream!"
Shen Xuan asked: "If he passes the exam, where are you going to let him go?"
Zhao Xindao: "Dabo Town."
In late June, Ding Guofeng, together with students from the navigation school and a dozen Portuguese craftsmen, drove a sailboat named "Beihai No. 1", along with the new mayor of Dabo Town, a hundred households of Henan refugees and a company of people.
The garrison troops sailed to Dabo Town in the south of Kuye Island.
The newly appointed mayor of Dabo Town is Jiang Tenglin, the same Jiang Xiucai who once falsely claimed that "Xuanwu was born" in Fuldan City. This man was sent to Ezo by Liu Sheng's order and worked for a year before being transferred back.
After that, he worked with Chen Qingsong for a period of time. Zhao Xin selected among dozens of civil affairs clerks, and finally decided to promote Jiang Xiucai. After all, his ability was still very good.
The "Beihai No. 1" they were traveling on was actually the Nicholas, one of the two three-masted sailing ships captured at Kuye Island the year before last; and the other sailing ship named Natalia was now named "Beihai No. 2".
"", both ships have a displacement of 1,500 tons, and are currently the two largest sailing ships among the five.
It is said that these two boats had completed the hull repair and shell cleaning work in the middle of last year, and at the same time, the parts below the waterline were completely wrapped with copper sheets. When Deng Fei carried out the completion inspection, he found that the Portuguese craftsmen used
The copper sheets were all fixed with iron nails, so they were all replaced with copper nails.
After carrying out several missions to transport coal from Ezochi to Hokkai Town, before winter last year, Hokkai No. 1 and No. 2 entered the dock again and began to modify; this time, diesel engines and propeller blades were installed. For confidentiality reasons
Consider that those Portuguese craftsmen from Macau cannot participate in this matter. However, because Zhao Liang really couldn't spare time, Deng Fei took the students from the technical school to be responsible for the installation work. The whole progress was delayed, and it was strange.
Extremely slow.
After Wu Ping'an came with his people in May, because the power plant was in the early stage of infrastructure construction, many of the newly arrived time travelers were temporarily idle and had nothing to do, so they were captured by Deng Fei. As a result, the modification speed suddenly became very fast.
It was all completed in one day.
The engines selected for Beihai No. 1 and Beihai No. 2 are domestically produced 300KM/420 horsepower four-cylinder marine clutches, and the propeller blades are also purchased separately. When tested after installation, it was confirmed that the maximum speed can reach 15 knots in headwind or when the sails are down.
per hour; fuel consumption is between 75 and 78 liters per hour.
After renovating two large sailboats with a displacement of 1,500 tons, Deng Fei took advantage of the abundant manpower and began to renovate three other small sailboats.
Amidst all the busy work, the time has entered July, and Beihai Town is also preparing to usher in the spring wheat harvest. At this moment, a piece of news sent back from Xu Dayong in northern Jiangsu once again shocked the entire Beihai Town.
On June 9th, due to continuous heavy rains in the upper reaches of the Yellow River, the water level in the lower reaches surged. A major breach occurred in the Yellow River dam located in Shisanbao, Sui Prefecture, Henan Province. The floods broke open the Yellow River dam in two places, both with a width of 20
After that, the flood flowed through the Guohe River and diverted the Huaihe River into the sea, causing hundreds of thousands of acres of fertile farmland to be flooded in Guide Prefecture in Henan, Bozhou in Anhui, Mengcheng and other states and counties. All the affected areas lost their summer grain harvest this year!
According to what Xu Dayong sent people to learn, this disaster left hundreds of thousands of people homeless. A large number of victims fled to Shandong, Jiangsu, and Huguang to take advantage of them, becoming a new batch of refugees. Those who stayed behind
Almost all the people in the Yellow River Flood Area are old people, women and young children. In some places, there is a swamp for dozens of miles, with ruins and no human habitation in the villages. Many people who stay live on eating Guanyin soil, and people who can't hold their bowels and die of constipation every day.
Yes. There are even human meat workshops in the mountainous areas of northern Anhui. Extremely poor families have begun selling their sons, daughters, and wives to the workshops to feed passing guests.
At the same time, because the Qing government used troops to suppress the Tiandihui rebellion in Taiwan, a large amount of grain was shipped to Fujian as military ration, causing grain prices in the north to skyrocket.
On the afternoon of the day they received the news, Zhao Xin, Liu Sheng, and Zhou Weiguo put down their affairs and hurried back to Beihai Town from Fuldan City. Early the next morning, in the newly built large conference room in Beihai Town
, Civil Affairs, Maritime Affairs, Training Command, Medical, and Education all relevant persons in charge were present. Even Wu Ping'an rushed over with a few people to see if there was anything they could do to help.
In the conference room, Chen Qingsong reported the situation with a serious face and said to everyone: "Next, we have to discuss how to rescue and resettle the refugees without affecting the autumn harvest."
"Excuse me, where is the Thirteenth Fort in Suizhou?"
Chen Qingsong saw that it was the fat man named Fan Tong under Wu An'an, so he replied: "East of Shangqiu, Henan."
At this time, Zhao Xin spoke first: "Let me tell you first, the exercise plan will be postponed. The entire army will be dispatched this time, firstly to support the autumn harvest, and secondly to help build resettlement houses."
As soon as these words came out, Liu Sheng, Wang Yuanfang, and Wu Siyu stood up and said that there was no problem at all and they would cooperate fully.
Chen Qingsong asked: "Are you considering transporting a group of people to Ezo Land and Kuye Island?"
Zhao Xin nodded and said: "Okay. Let's place two thousand people on each side first."
Yu Deli said: "I propose to mobilize the students of the school to cooperate with the security police and do a good job in publicity work among residents to avoid unnecessary trouble."
Hong Tao said: "After a major disaster, there will be a major epidemic. We will arrange people to accompany the ship and do a good job in epidemic prevention on the way."
Wu Ping'an, Fan Tong and the other newcomers didn't say anything, and listened quietly to everyone's speeches. Fan Tong said to himself, "Good guys, every one of them is serious, as if they are real."
After everyone had spoken, Wu An'an said: "Mr. Zhao, see what we can do to help?"
Zhao Xindao: "Old Wu, building a factory over there is your first priority, otherwise nothing will be done when winter comes."
Wu Ping'an thought for a while and said slowly: "Don't worry about this. The foundation part is guaranteed to be completed by the end of September. But now many people are idle and have nothing to do. If you don't think so, if you are short of manpower, just come to me. There are more."
Don’t tell me, forty or fifty people are on standby at any time.”
After the meeting, Xu Dayong, who was in northern Jiangsu, received an order from Beihai Town on the same day, which contained only eight words: transport people with all our strength without delay.
Then, starting from the fifth day of July, the entire Beihai Town began to move. All cargo ships and modified sailboats were dispatched, and a large number of nurses from hospitals and all students from the navigation school went out to sea with the ships.
This time, they no longer only pick up people from Jeju Island as before. The Thor, Thunder, Beihai 1 and 2 all gathered along the coast of northern Jiangsu and began to blatantly transport refugees from the mainland.
Four large and small ships from Beihai Town suddenly appeared on the east side of Wutiao Sha. In addition, there were fleets of sand ships sailing out from the inner ocean and approaching these large ships to transport refugees. They quickly attracted the attention of the passing sand ships.
Since the Ming Dynasty, the inner and outer oceans in the northern Jiangsu area have been divided by the "Five Sands"; this is where the Yellow River used to enter the sea. Due to the accumulation of large amounts of sediment, all merchant ships going north must detour eastward to prevent the bottom of the ship.
stranded.
A few days later, the Miaowan Water Camp stationed in Funing received a report that several unknown Yi boats were parked outside Wutiao Sands. This shocked the Miaowan Camp guerrillas, and he quickly sent people to report the situation in Huai'an City.
While guarding the camp, he ordered his subordinate Qian Zong to sail out to sea to check.
As a result, when the CEO came to Wutiaosha and took a look, he was shocked. When compared with other people's big boats, his big boat was like an ant meeting an elephant.
However, at present, the officers and soldiers leading the Qing Dynasty are not afraid of foreigners. No matter what big or small boats you have, go to Guangzhou and wait. If they say they won't let you in, they won't let you in. They are very arrogant!
"Come closer! This group of barbarians is completely arrogant!"
"Sir, these four boats are so big that they are scary. Where should we stop?"
Mr. Qian pointed to the nearest three-masted sailboat and said, "That's the one!"